Archive for October, 2009

The 2009 October Daring Bakers’ challenge was brought to us by Ami S. She chose macarons from Claudia Fleming’s The Last Course: The Desserts of Gramercy Tavern as the challenge recipe.

I’ve been kind of tired and overwhelmed lately. But, I pushed myself to make these macarons. What did I do? Iadded a little coffee powder to the batter and made a filling from 70 percent chocolate and hot coffee (a water ganache). I thought the bitterness would offset the sweetness. They were quite nice. I sort of got feet on my macarons. (more…)

Actually, I don’t have pictures from the Sisterhood brunch itself. But, I can tell you about the cake decorating demonstration I did.

I had something like ten minutes to talk. At the end of a 2 hour brunch when everyone was more than ready to leave. Oh, and it had to be participatory. So, what did I talk about?

Stenciling, that’s what.

I let everyone take a rectangle of brownie and stencil on it with powdered sugar, cocoa powder, and plain powdered sugar. The only thing I forgot was taking pictures!

Anyway, here is my tip for coloring powdered sugar fast and easy: take granulated sugar and add food coloring and mush it aound in a plastic bag. Then add powdered sugar and mush it around some more. Ideally, you would pulverize it in a blender or food processor, but it is usable without that step. The granulated sugar helps distribute the color and break up lumps that form in the powdered sugar.

Here is another tip: buy stencils from the craft store from a section other than the cake decorating aisle. So much choice, so inexpensive. I experimented with stenciling to create a project for the brunch, but I am now adding this to my regular repertoire of quick and easy cake decorating tricks.